The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives:  Episodes: 
Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'
(two reflections)

Recent discussions in xfiles have brought me to the surprising revelation that a lot of fans think Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" is an overrated episode. Even those people who really like the episode see it primarily or exclusively as comedic, a self-parody skewering a show that had started to take itself too seriously. Even Autumn Tysko, whose reviews I usually love, doesn't seem to quite have clicked with the episode. Maybe it's my fondness for unreliable narrators, or for the mystically unknowable, but I take it more seriously than most viewers. Its wit and satire is a great part of its charm, to be sure, but what interests me about Jose Chung is the way that it questions the very premise of the show.

The truth is out there.
This is what we're told at the beginning of almost every episode, and for the most part we have no reason to question it. Mulder and Scully agree on very little, but the quest for the truth is a goal that they can both share. Although it may be difficult to attain, they don't seem to doubt that it is in theory achievable.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
You can argue that the show was in fact postmodern from the start. In season one it certainly aimed to stay on the fence with regard to supernatural vs. non-supernatural explanations. We have a lot of instances of proof being snatched away at the last minute, the idea that the shadowy men will never allow anything substantive to remain for Mulder and Scully to grasp hold of. Fundamentally, however, the early show accepts the idea that substantive proof does exist, even if it remains forever beyond the grasp of the people who care most about it.

"What is truth?" asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
So why is Jose Chung the episode that ushers in the postmodern era of the X-Files? Because it introduces the idea that the truth is not merely hard to grasp, but essentially unknowable. It asks what is the nature of this truth that we're seeking. It asks whether we would even recognize the truth as the truth if we saw it. It asks whether maybe the truth isn't out there after all. An unsettling question, to be sure.

Furthermore, the episode is all about subjectivity and the unreliable narrator. As Sarah Stegall points out in her excellent review, almost everything in the episode--including the characterization of Mulder and Scully--is very slightly but intentionally off-kilter. "It works," she says, "because Darin Morgan, like a water strider, has developed a knack for skating across the outer skin of reality without quite breaking the surface tension."

For although we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways on this planet, we are all... alone.
So what do we have if we don't have the truth? We have each other, at least. Or do we? The more thoughtful coda to the episode seems to me to be part and parcel of its major theme. It suggests that the search for extraterrestrial life is only a symptom of a wider search for meaning and a sense of connection in life. Those who search most fervently for extraterrestrials often do so because they feel like aliens in their own lives. In the end, though, Jose Chung is as pessimistic about the search for subjective human connection as it is about the search for objective external truth.

To my eyes, The X-Files is a very diverse show, holding within itself many different depictions and versions of reality. Whether or not you like Jose Chung depends on what aspects of the show resonate with you. It has neither a strong mytharc strand nor really much Mulder/Scully interaction, so I can see why many people don't respond to it. Still, it's a very powerful episode. Is it just a comedy, or even primarily a comedy? I think not.

Author: Wendelah1

The first time I watched "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," I doubt I even liked it. I probably thought it was better than the Season three episode that preceded it, though maybe just barely. But my husband was enchanted and immediately proclaimed it his favorite. Although it has taken me quite a bit longer to come around to appreciating the episode's merits, I can honestly say now that I do, even if it is hard for me to articulate exactly why.

The episode is framed as a conversation between Jose Chung, best-selling author and Dana Scully, FBI special agent, about an X-Files investigation into an alien abduction he is writing about for his latest book. Although Jose Chung admires Scully for her intelligence, beauty and good taste, and she considers his novel, "The Lonely Buddha", to be one of her favorites, on the subject of the truth, they couldn't be farther apart. As we know, Scully believes that the truth is out there, and moreover, that it can be explained by science. Jose Chung believes, or at least he states, that "truth is as subjective as reality." Or, that there is no such thing as objective truth, at least as far as his current writing project is concerned. To confuse matters even more, he has invented a new literary genre to tell this story: "non-fiction science fiction." He is in Washington to get her version of the truth, and had, of course, expected to speak with "the real expert" on aliens, Fox Mulder.

Is Agent Scully going to be right in this case, or will the fuzzy thinking that invented the idea of "non-fiction science fiction" triumph yet again? Well, this is The X-Files, what do you think? For every version of the truth that is presented, there is a counter version. Chrissy Giorgio's telling of the events that led to the FBI's investigation contradicts Harold Lamb's. She tells the police she was date-raped, whereas he says they were abducted by aliens. Then when interrogated by Mulder and Scully, Harold contradicts his own story, and seems to be willing to accept hers. Under hypnosis, Chrissy tells two wildly different versions, which differ yet again from the original rape scenario. At some point during the episode, Mulder believes all of the stories, except the one about date rape, of course. Predictably, Scully doesn't believe any of them, and has come up with her own explanation, which, while completely plausible, is also completely wrong. The bleeping police investigator still thinks Chrissy was date-raped.

Every time you think you have the puzzle solved, writer Darin Morgan throws in another clue that contradicts what had come before. Two of the aliens turn out to be humans wearing costumes. The downed U.F.O.turns out to be a crashed military aircraft. If pilot Jack Schaffer is to be believed, the U.S. government goes around abducting its citizens in order to mess with their minds on a routine basis. This seems absurd, but Mulder and Scully did find a dead Air Force pilot inside an alien costume. Both civilian eye witnesses seem to be unreliable, Blaine Faulkner for giving a version of the events that contradicts Scully's, Roky Crikenson, for concocting a story that includes lava men, being recruited to save humanity by a monster called Lord Kinbote and a journey via alien craft to the center of the earth.

Roky is a complete nut, but was his story a complete confabulation? The opening scenes showed Chrissy and Harold being abducted from their car by English speaking aliens, who were then interrupted, mid-abduction, by the creature we come to know as Lord Kinbote, and presumably abducted themselves. Isn't it a rule that if they show it on T.V. in the teaser, it must have really happened? Well if it isn't, it should be.

Darin Morgan takes all of the clichés of the classic alien abduction scenario, whips them together with all of the familiar plots of a classic X-Files episode, and comes up with magic. By the end of the episode, each viewer has put all of the pieces of the puzzle together to create their own version of reality. Because it is my husband's favorite episode, I've seen it and discussed it with him on more than one occasion and we can't even agree on what really happened.

So is that the message we are supposed to take away with us after viewing (and re-viewing) the episode? That reality is completely subjective, and so for all intents and purposes, we are alone on life's journey, held captive by the limitations of human consciousness? That even if the truth is out there, we won't ever be sure we've really found it?

JOSE CHUNG: Agent Mulder, this book will be written. But it can only benefit if you can explain something to me.

MULDER: What's that?

JOSE CHUNG: What really happened to those kids on that night?

MULDER: (looks down)  How the hell should I know?

Exactly.

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